If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

I liked the Chang enough in box, didn't see it loose, the box did an ok job showing the item considering how bad the window design is.

Looking at a review of the DST Enterprise B, holy crap what a mess that thing is, I was comparing it to the original prop, boy that'd really bum you out to see not just the ridiculously clumsy paint but also the sculpting which has no excuse: http://www.startrekpropauthority.com...prise-b-7.html
"Oh, we'll just halfass this, nobody will notice, it's not like Trek fans are obsessive about these sorts of things. Guess at the panels, throw on any ol' size torpedo launchers, go ahead and shrink the main deflector, leave the bussard collectors half unglued. Then we'll let the paint guys get drunk and slap on all sorts of mistakes like the wrong registry on the side and then also tampo it backwards."

Darth Vader is becoming the Mickey Mouse of Star Wars.

"In Brooklyn, a castle, is where dwell I"

The use of a lightsaber does not make one a Jedi, it is the ability to not use it.

Glad to hear they didn't axe the landing gear. Still, when they go through all the trouble of doing an excellent paint job, it seems rather cheap to just slap a sticker on the side. It can't be that expensive to paint HMS Bounty on the side.

I'm looking forward to Excelsior, but it worries me that Enterprise B is so bad. They're basically the same ship. I hope the factory that makes Ent B doesn't make Excelsior.

Glad to hear they didn't axe the landing gear. Still, when they go through all the trouble of doing an excellent paint job, it seems rather cheap to just slap a sticker on the side. It can't be that expensive to paint HMS Bounty on the side.

I'm looking forward to Excelsior, but it worries me that Enterprise B is so bad. They're basically the same ship. I hope the factory that makes Ent B doesn't make Excelsior.

Yeah, the landing gear is what I'm waiting on at this point, but with my birthday coming up at the end of the month I might just ask for the Chang one now anyway. Using a sticker instead of paint or a tampo is not cool.

I'm sure it's the same factory making them, they even included the Excelsior tampo for the stardrive hull badging (both flipped and normal). They screwed up deco'ing the saucer rim though, that is unforgivable whether tampo or mask. The whole thing is such a mess, I think it might be time to throw in the towel if they can't get QC back under control. It's not like the line ever really had it fully together, but that Ent-B was awful.

Darth Vader is becoming the Mickey Mouse of Star Wars.

"In Brooklyn, a castle, is where dwell I"

The use of a lightsaber does not make one a Jedi, it is the ability to not use it.

Diamond had the Excelsior listed in their booth at $70, I wanted to see it before I even considered buying it. On Friday, I walked by and figured I'd come back and maybe get one, when I did they were sold out. So I almost bought someone's Enterprise B for $50 but then thought to buy Excelsior from Amazon, turned out it was $47 and it was on my doorstep on Monday.

The Excelsior is in a pretty big box and uses a single try-me voice, although the switch to go to play is accessible from the tray without removing the ship.

The ship has no aztecking at all which is very frustrating, it takes it down to that Playmates level of detail in the majority of the ship. They changed the warp nacelles from the Ent-B and oddly removed the side-fins which is inaccurate, I think someone at Diamond googled the ship and just used CGI images made by fans. The impulse engines apparently have a glue issue, mine has a slight separation there and other pics I've seen also look to have that, possibly from assembly stress on the saucer. The bridge button requires finesse on mine, it doesn't set off lights and sounds half the time it's pressed, I think because the travel is loose and spongy. The lights and sounds aren't very clever this time around, not a lot of "show" varying the lights, and the sounds are almost all dialogue (although the dialogue is well-mastered here). I just noticed another issue with the saucer, the middle part isn't fitting properly, it sticks up where it joins the rest of the saucer on the left only, this thing has to go back - glad I got it through Amazon, they are shipping me a replacement that fast.

Sculpted detailing is like "Playmates-plus", it's definitely not up to spec with the other Diamond releases when you've got a neck with half the lines it should and the "photon torpedo launchers" that I don't think actually are but they are openings in the neck are too close together, and an "overbite" just below the neck that shouldn't be there at all, and simple underside hangar detailing. The main deflector is flat out wrong, it sticks out like an "outie" belly button and its cavity doesn't recess properly. And the nacelles seem to sag slightly so they dip down as they go back. The RCS thrusters were sculpted and indented on the prototype, not on the production piece though.

I'm not sure it's to scale with... anything in the line, really, it's considerably underscaled for the Enterprise A, maybe it's in scale with the Ent-D but I don't have access to mine right now.

Paint has a few of the same lazy mistakes from Diamond, things that simply don't curve correctly comes up on the ring around the saucer (also join errors galore there) and the red lines spanning from the registry on top of the saucer, and the registry with the Starfleet logo on either side of the secondary hull, actually about half of anything red is off. They didn't bother paining in the grilles of the warp nacelles, so they're transparent when not lit. That said, most things in blue and black aren't too bad, even the windows aren't generally too rough, and there's only one spot where there's oil or something interfering with the paint causing discoloration (that's pretty good for DST). Some of the paint is nice, some is sloppy, it's very schizo.

The impulse engines look good, the energy deflection domes (these replaced the single one from ST3) look nice and even have silver paint on the spars, the overall sculpt is pleasing still, and they have plenty of detailed paint apps where necessary (minus aztecking).

Is it worth $70? Absolutely not, it's clumsy and has a few notable mistakes and absences. Is it worth $50? Depends on how you feel about the Excelsior, but I'd say it comes close.

Darth Vader is becoming the Mickey Mouse of Star Wars.

"In Brooklyn, a castle, is where dwell I"

The use of a lightsaber does not make one a Jedi, it is the ability to not use it.

JT, before you send it back, mine had an issue with part of the impulse engine sticking up and I ended up squeezing on it until it popped back into place. If thats the problem, maybe give that a try and see if it works.